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Monthly Archives: June 2019

The other day, the Wall St. Journal reprinted a policy statement from Ravelry.com, a “free site for knitters and crocheters.” The new policy, as reprinted, lead with, “We are banning support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry.” Explaining their reasoning, they said that “Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”

Undeniably. As in, it is not even a subject that can allow reasoned debate.

I’ll simply leave that alone as a thing that speaks for itself. In terms of a pattern, I don’t know how widespread it is to ban content* because it leans conservative. It is probably more common than I would imagine, particularly when it comes to on-line communities that are naturally left-leaning. What is more visible and more trackable is the banning of bigger-name conservatives, the celebrities of social media, a pattern that seems to me to have been accelerating through May and June of this year.

I was going to try to create a list of the notable deplatforming and demonetization that has occurred until I found someone else who was doing that. I don’t know how comprehensive this list is, but it is almost certainly more so that what I would come up with on my own. Here is the link**. In addition to listing those who have had content or earning capability removed, there are links to their Alt- websites.

Having had my ban-hammer thunder stolen, I’ll comment on one more Wall St. Journal piece that appeared this morning. Peggy Noonan, who loves to hate Trump and loves the inspiration it brings to her, this day wrote about the Democrats’ debate and the portents of its apparent message for the 2020 presidential election.

What drew me into the article was the highlighted quote*** saying “They [the Democrat candidates for President] march in lockstep with the left. What are they offering voters who backed Trump in 2016?” The answer, to me, is obvious. Nothing. Not… A… Thing. Why? Because they don’t need “those people.” They have a majority and that majority will prevail. They neither need, nor want, the support of those who are out of step with that majority. That said, I read the article itself to see what Peggy’s take on it was.

As near as I can tell, the actual quote didn’t make it into the published version of the editorial. That itself might be an interesting topic for discussion but it has little to do with what I’m about today. So while she neither asked nor answered the question as printed, in a round about way, she actually answers much as I have. She recalls a letter sent to her by one-half of a liberal leaning couple. While similar in politics, they are of different backgrounds; the husband raised in the upper-middle class and the wife poor. The wife told the husband, from the moment of Trump’s entry into the presidential fray, that Trump would win. He didn’t believe her, but she stuck to her guns. Much later (but when Hillary was still “certain” to beat nominee Trump), he asked her to explain. She replied, “He speaks my language, and there’s a lot more of me than there is of you.”

This is, of course, a key to our current political situation. Both “sides” feel that they are the majority and so they and their right-thinking fellow travelers are bound to triumph in the end. There is no need to compromise or even deviate from one’s course. Eventually, our “silent majority” will rise up and the lunatic fringe will become a minor chapter in the history books.

Noonan, of course, sees herself as above this fight and a member of neither tribe. She is a Republican, but advocates for a shift of Republicanism away from the post-Reagan, small-government base to more of a conservative take on America’s status quo. She seems to suggest that, by picking up some of the left’s more popular causes, Republicans can become the party of the vast middle and, thus, restore sanity to the political world. Similarly, though, with Trump at the helm of the Republican ship, she would like to see the Democrats move toward that middle and restore order and the old ways. With an opponent like Trump, this would be easy pickings for a Democrat in the mold of their previous generations. Perhaps literally, as she seems to have a preference for Joe Biden.

For most of us, we have become surrounded by those who think like us. That may be literal, in that we live in an area overwhelmingly populated by our own political tribesmen. It also may be figurative. I’ve read many a blog (some of them on the above ban list) where a writer will come home from his office to write about the trials and tribulations of being surrounded by liberals all day. The comments section will assure him that he is on the side of the angels and, anyway, if he could leave his urban enclave and travel the “real” America, he would find that most of us think like he does.

What is the real answer? Is there a real answer? Despite Peggy’s assurances that we are on the trajectory to repeat 2016, I tend to believe that the left is more grounded in their analysis (of course, I also thought so in 2016 and was wrong). I think that, at least in terms of the math behind elections, they really do have the votes are inevitably sliding towards a permanent majority. They do need to stop themselves overplaying their hand; temper their policies a little for the election; but they probably can ignore the traditional moderates and win by energizing their new base.

What does that mean for the 49%? What happens when it is clear we have no chance of winning elections? What happens when we are unable to speak our minority opinion, because our views are “undeniably support for white supremacy?” What happens when we can’t even read the views of the anti-establishment thinkers because they’ve all been banned from the publishing platforms that matter in our near future? I shudder to think.

*It is one thing to decide that political arguments don’t belong on a non-political discussion site. It is a little worse to decide that pro-conservative or pro-Trump political arguments don’t belong on a site, but all others are fine. In this case, the ban appears to apply to the artistic content itself. In other words, creating a knitting pattern that says “Resist” is fine. Creating one that says “Make America Great Again” would get tossed.

**I’ve taken a screenshot of the website as it looked as I wrote this. Given the subject, it would not surprise me if the list itself were to disappear before long.

***In the journalism biz, I don’t know what this is called. Where the publisher pulls quotes out of the main text and duplicates them in large, bold font somewhere in the middle of the article (usually not where the original quote appears). I’m sure it has a name, if only I knew what it was.

As unlikely as it may have seemed a decade or two ago, AMC network is among the top producers of new dramatic content for Television. The Walking Dead tops many charts in terms of successful TV series. Similarly, Breaking Bad and Mad Men received highest critical acclaim as well as commercial success and cultural influence (even those who don’t watch these series probably recognize the “memes” based upon them). Other notable series, at least for me, include The Killing (an American adaptation of the Danish series), Halt and Catch Fire, Hell on Wheels, and (now) The Son.

The story is set in West Texas in 1915 amid the turbulence along the Mexican border. Patriarch Eli McCullough (Pierce Brosnan) is attempting to shepherd his family into the modern age by converting his vast ranch into an oil-producing property. The show flashes back to 1850 and Eli’s teenage years, when he was captured and mentored by a Comanche tribe. The show is based on a 2013 novel of the same name by Philipp Meyer.

The novel was meant to be an exploration of the foundational mythology of Texas; from its taming of the frontier to its vast wealth derived from oil. As such, is this story meant to be strictly historical or subtly fantastical? Likewise the TV show is a nice-looking period piece but inevitably is stylized for dramatic effect. As far as I can tell, there is no historical basis for the characters and their particular story. However, the themes of border, cross-border migration, racism, violence, and the corrupting influence of wealth are all clearly meant to be a reflection of the problems we have today on the southern border. A little less clear is what the show is trying to tell us about those issues. That’s a good thing. It can get tedious being told what to think.

Part of that style is the mixing of eras. In 1850, we are treated to a reprise of the Dances with Wolves story. There is even a nearly identical scene were the Indian elder (Zahn McClarnon) asks the “White” character how many whites are coming – and I think he might just give the same answer. Somehow, though, the Indian tribe in The Son seems a little bit more modern (although Dances with Wolves took places some 15 years later). The Comanche speak Spanish while McClarnon’s character also speaks English. Despite their lack of understanding of the full impact of the impending American settlement of Texas, they do seem fairly well acquainted with the ways of the European-Americans. Similarly, in 1915, we have the ranchers riding horses wearing gunbelts and holsters. However, Eli (for example) carries a 1911 as his sidearm and a Winchester 1907 semi-automatic rifle on his horse. His 1915 contemporaries will also hop into cars or trucks as easily as on horseback.

That style is obviously one of the key features of this show. It’s also no accident that the language of the times matches some of the political banter of our own, particularly regarding the language of Reconquista and its resurgence today. There are also multiple wars on the horizon; the Civil War in young Eli’s time and U.S. incursion into Mexico to capture Pancho Villa in old Eli’s. Similarly, the First World War is ongoing and waiting for America’s participation. Like Hell on Wheels, the violence, the detailed use of firearms, and the Western genre trappings are all appealing to a certain audience. Finally, The Son is a vehicle for Brosnan, who does does dominate the small screen. I also am very impressed with McClarnon’s character. I liked him in Longmire and here he impresses me further still. Some might point out that he’s playing a very similar role in both shows, but his ethnic suitability for certain roles isn’t his fault.

Like a few other shows I’ve watched (The Shooter and Punisher come immediately to mind), The Son does seem to be targeting the gun culture specifically. Eli’s son Pete demonstrates expert handling of his Winchester 1894 (the classic 30-30 lever gun that is still popular today). Other characters still use Civil War technology and are shown loading their cap-and-ball revolvers as danger approaches. The show features a range of historical, but also historically-remarkable, guns. As discussed, certain characters have, essentially, cutting edge technology for 1915; Eli’s pistol and rifle as an example. We even have an employee of Eli, a black man who is also a war veteran, produce a Lewis machine gun for several heavier engagements. That gun, another 1911 design, didn’t start to see deployment to the Second World War until 1914. It seems a little gratuitous to feature it in the hands of some “cowboys” in 1915, but it is not entirely possible. Particular if Eli was both well-connected and a collector of modern guns, he might well have got his mitts on a early production version.

Ironically, Brosnan has been outspoken with some of his anti-gun pronouncements. This doesn’t fit well with this show’s audience and, perhaps, the same could be said for most of his roles from James Bond to Matador (a favorite of mine). To add to the irony, he had a run-in with the law regarding an attempt to carry a 10-inch hunting knife onto an airplane in Burlington, Vermont. He said it wasn’t 10-inches and was, anyway, a part of the “art supplies” he carried – he used it to sharpen his pencils. It doesn’t sound like he got into any real trouble over the incident, so I’d be surprised if it has changed him much regarding the unintended consequences of banning “tools.”

Some days, I’d like to reserve my custom to those who aren’t actively opposing things I believe in. Doing so would narrow my entertainment options in the extreme. In this case, when Season 2 of The Son comes to DVD, I think will simply continue watch and enjoy.

When one reads a book about a war, traditionally one looks forward to a fairly high level view of it. You read about the armies and their maneuvers. Where individual decisions come into play, you might focus on the generals. Perhaps, more rarely, the performance of lower-ranked soldiers, where it might have turned the course of a battle, might be explained. While books written about and from the perspective of the common soldier are probably more popular now, it seems to me that the majority of war non-fiction is about leaders. Of course, one obvious exception is the memoir that focuses on the experience of the individual soldier, whether biographical or fictional.

The author of The Boys of ’67: Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam, Andrew Wiest, begins his preface by noting that one of the inspirations for his book was having read Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July. The other major inspiration was his personal relationship with a veteran of C Company (of the 4th Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division), which prompted him into writing a book about this unit’s original deployment to Vietnam. The book focuses mostly on the experience of the individual rifleman up through their squad leaders rather than the officers and the grand strategy.

Another motivation for this books comes from the unique identity of the 9th Infantry as perhaps the last of its kind.

One upon a time, in Merry Olde England, regiments were raised for King and Country by local lords. The components of an army tended to be geographically based and brothers-in-arms might truly be brothers or, at the very least, neighbors. The American army inherited English traditions and up-to-and-into the First World War, there remained a regional component to American units. Look no further than the regimental designations in the Civil War for a clear example.

The First World War, for the most part, saw the last of geographically-based regular army units. Obviously, National Guard activation remains an exception to this day, but for the regular army, the location of a unit’s base while stationed at home is probably not a good indicator of the origin of the men that make up that unit. The Second World War saw the end of another trend. Up through WWII, the transition from peace to war meant the raising of new military units to fight that war. Contrast that to the post-War era, where the United States had endeavored to maintain sufficient forces to meet whatever challenges it may face. For the individual soldier, the difference is being recruited or drafted and then trained as part of their deployed unit version being assigned into an already-existing unit after training. In this last respect, the 9th Infantry, itself, marked the end of its own era.

The 9th Infantry was deactivated at the end of WWII. Despite being reactivated for the Korean War, it did not have a combat role and was deactivated again in 1962. In early 1966, the U.S. sought to extend their influence in the Mekong Delta. The 9th Infantry would fulfill this mission and three of its battalions would be organized as “Riverine” forces; using watercraft and waterways rather than helicopters to move to and from battlefields. The 4th Battalion of the 47th Infantry Regiment* was one such riverine unit.

As a newly-activated unit, the men of C Company were, by and large, draftees who all received their notices at the same time. The arrived for induction together, trained together, and when their training was complete, they deployed to Vietnam together. A rather horrific voyage carried them from California to Vietnam, incidents from which are related to the reader of the book.

Inevitably, the unit began to suffer attrition. This took the form both of soldiers killed as well as injuries that were serious enough to remove them from duty. As the original cadre was whittled away, C/4/47 became more like any other unit in Vietnam, filling up with replacements having no connection to the originally-deployed unit. While some of the replacements’ stories feature in the book, the narrative, for the most part, focuses on that original core and how a year’s worth of duty in Vietnam affected them. Inducted in May, the unit deployed to Vietnam in December 1966. Any soldier who remained in their unit until the end returned to the United States around New Years’ Day of 1968.

In this, the the book sheds some light on the failure of “the numbers” to capture the impact of Vietnam on soldiers’ morale. For this unit, the numbers looked good. Combat deaths were 10% or lower over the course of their tour while losses inflicted upon the enemy where considerably higher. Their missions were successful. On the ground, however, it felt different. Missions often felt like, if not quite a failure, perhaps a waste. Men were as apt to fight booby traps or maybe just weather and rough terrain as enemy soldiers. When they did fight the enemy, it was often in the form of an ambush, where they were at an initial disadvantage that had to be overcome. That, in the end, said battle was deemed a victory was small consolation to the American unit that lost many good men in the opening moments of the fight.

While combat deaths were relatively low, by the time the company returned to the United States, most of the original members were gone. In addition to the deaths, there were injuries, many of them severe and permanent. There were also those who just transferred to other units and other locations. The net result of seeing the vast majority of your brothers-in-arms having gone had its psychological effect, independent of how the unit’s performance fit into the strategic picture. It is also important that losses, for the individual, weren’t balanced by gains on the individual level. When men died, either in an ambush or by faceless traps, there would be no counter-punch. While men had a natural instinct to get “payback,” it was unlikely that they would actual be able to again catch and fight the very enemies that had bloodied them in an earlier battle. There were no front lines to overrun or strongholds to capture and hold. In this, the war would seem to just meander on and on with no measure of progress except the loss of your best friends.

As depressing as that assessment sounds, the book does manage to avoid politics. The men themselves, even the draftees, largely entered the Army as patriots ready to fulfill their duty. In May of 1966, even the country at large was mostly supportive of the war. The men were shocked to return** to a country that, in 1968, was wracked by anti-war protests. While the narrative seems free from anti-war bias, the author does not hesitate to identify incompetence, either in overall policy or in the individual commander. It’s one thing to lose a friend to the fortunes of war but it is so much worse when it was you’re own side that caused the loss.

Bottom line, this book is a compelling read. It provides a picture of the Vietnam War, not as it looked to us as a nation or the military, but to the individuals who were called upon by their country to serve and so did their duty as best they could.

*Fictional character Forrest Gump served in the 2nd Battalion of the 47th, which was not one of the Riverine units.

**This book, unique to those I’ve read so far, spend the final chapter or two discussing the return of the men to the U.S. This includes how Vietnam dominated their lives in the decades after the war and the impact upon them of the internet and the reunions that began to take place in the years before the book was published.

This exercise with historical games began when I first started watching Vikings. I think I was originally watching on the History Channel; each new episode as it came out. When I first heard Vikings was going to be broadcast, I was a little nervous about a) how the History Channel might fumble the development of a historical-based drama and b) the obviously over-stylized interpretation of the period in question. As I watched a handful of the episodes, I wasn’t thrilled, but neither was I entirely put off. Eventually I lost track of the shows, as one often does when trying to catch things on the TV’s schedule.

Around that same time, I happened to be reading one of the books in The Saxon Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. It was a the combination of Cornwell’s writing and the depiction of a shield wall on Vikings that made me decide I wanted to find a game that would go with the experience. My first attempt was a using Medieval 2: Total War and a mod-package called The Last Kingdom, apparently made by someone inspired in a similar fashion as I. From there, I got interested in the Wolves from the Sea expansion for Field of Glory, which generated its own long and sordid tale. Worse yet, now that I finally have that expansion in hand, there were no battles created for the period of the Great Heathen Army or Alfred the Great. In any case, before I got very far, I ended up focusing on the Cold War period, rather than the Age of Vikings, and never got back to it.

Now, it seems, Vikings has come a full circle for me. I’ve watched up through the awkwardly-named Season 402, wherein the Sons of Ragnar Lothbrok (as defined by this series) threaten to intrude upon the story line of The Last Kingdom and the other books of The Saxon Chronicles, itself now a TV Series.

My initial misgivings aside, this is a period that’s ripe for a fictionalized treatment. Actually, with The Last Kingdom and Cornwall’s other works, I’ve always been impressed by his treatment of Dark Age history. Stories of Ragnar Lothbrok and his offspring survive today in the form of myth and legend. The primary source for this era, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is too thin on detail to create from it a modern novel-style narrative without a whole lot of elaboration and speculation. If the paucity of details weren’t bad enough, the accuracy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has been called into question, at least in terms of some of is assertions. Being written in the court of Alfred the Great, one would have to expect an interpretation history favorable to his reign, as opposed to just a strict record of facts. To some extent, the self-history of the Saxons can be cross-referenced with the oral histories of the Norse via the Tale of Ragnar’s Sons. The Norse story, however, is clearly mythological in nature. Historians question whether Ragnar Lothbrok was was even a single personage, as opposed to an iconic representation of Scandinavian virtue. One can freely mix a story about the “real” Ragnar with mystical elements without worrying to much about “accuracy” because nobody really knows what an accurate version would look like.

Even still, one wonders at the necessity of shoving every Norse legend into a single TV show. Ragnar’s character on Vikings not only sires his sons through his wife Aslaug, as is documented in the sources, but his wife previous to Aslaug (when he is but a farmer) becomes the also-legendary Lagertha. His life-long friend Floki, having created the first fleet of boats capable of sailing to England, turns out to be none other than the historical Flóki Vilgerðarson, the discoverer and founder of the Norse colony on Iceland. We also find out that King Alfred the Great was, in fact, the bastard son of Queen Judith*. Not content to have this Judith marry two successive kings (father and son!), as her namesake did, this Judith not only has a long-running affair with the her father-in-law**, she has also produced a son with one Athelstan, one of the few survivors of the massacre at Lindisfarne Abbey, the first Viking raid upon the island of Britannia. Here, naturally, we credit the raid to Ragnar Lothbrok. Granted, these historical events are not well pinned down and did, in fact, all occur in the generation or two in which the story takes place. Nevertheless, it remains quite a stretch to weave them into a single familial narrative.

A little more problematically, from a math standpoint, Ragnar’s brother, Rollo, takes part along with Ragnar in both the raid on Lindisfarne (793) and the Siege of Paris (845). For Rollo to have accomplished all that he does in the show, from raiding Lindisfarne to besieging Paris to being crowned Duke of Normandy and founding the dynasty that would go on to rule England (as well as Sicily), he would have had to have lived to be around 140 years old.

The departure from the historical would seem to be particularly ironic by the fact that this is a History Channel production. One would expect a fidelity to the historical as a top priority. Of course, when Vikings first premiered, the History Channel was also running programs like Ancient Aliens and Pawn Stars. While long ridiculed for its seeming mockery of the channel’s name, by the time Vikings came out (and certainly by the time it was popular), nobody expected much history from the History Channel. The creator of Vikings, for his part, defended his decisions to heavily dramatize his story. He claimed that an exciting, albeit ahistorical show, would draw far more interest in actual Viking history than a dry and historically-accurate series. In this, history (so to speak) has backed his claim.

Particularly given that the depiction of small-force combat was one of the things I liked about Vikings, I’m a little sad to say that it doesn’t scale up. The portrayal of the larger battles, at least the ones I’ve seen so far, does not particularly impress. The emphasis is on the stock-fantasy “epic” battles, where the heroes smite the nameless hoards before facing off with each other in a one-on-one duel. Part of the problem is that there aren’t records of the battles whereby Ragnar’s sons conquered England. It is possible, even, that no big, decisive battle did occur. The campaign could easily have consisted of weaker armies retreating before stronger ones and a series of sieges and plunder.

Unfortunately, this inability to realistically visualize the period extends to the gaming world.

No One Else Can Take My Place

One game that is explicit in modeling the Sons of Ragnar and the Great Heathen Army is Crusader Kings II. A little over a year after the initial release, Crusader Kings‘ fifth expansion extended the start date for the game backwards to 867 AD, shortly after the start of the Great Heathen Army’s campaign. Other mechanics were added to add unique capabilities to the Vikings and to pagans in general. The technology system was revamped to allow for the greater range of advancement that will occur when you extend the potential length of the game backwards towards the fall of the Roman Empire.

Ivar the Boneless, supported by Sigurd, leads the Viking army in a war against East Anglia. It isn’t really 865 AD.

I’ve begun a new campaign, for academic purposes of course, that has me playing as Alfred the Great at the beginning of the Viking scenario. That means my older brother, Æthelred, is still king and I might expect to inherit his title if he dies reasonably soon. Of course, Crusader Kings can rapidly diverge from the historical formula so I could just as easily find myself fighting it out for control of Wessex as saving and uniting England. Doing my part to spoil the historical flavor up front, I’m arranging a marriage between myself and a Frankish princess, hoping to catapult my fortunes forward via continental politics.

The Saxons raise their forces to confront Ivar’s horde. 24,000+ Heathens is pretty great indeed.

Whatever happens politically, the challenge of this scenario is the Viking threat. Sons of Ragnar Ivar the Boneless and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye are leading the Great Heathen Army in the vicinity of York, a force that exceeds 24,000 soldiers when all totaled. While the very name of this force brings to mind a vast, angry horde, modern scholars’ estimates are far lower. A figure under 1000 has been arrived at by calculating the documented carrying capacity times the recorded number of boats. The consensus produces figures in the low 1000s.

Why Crusader Kings starts the Vikings off with an army roughly ten times the size it should be is a matter for speculation. I don’t think its as simple as they had some bad data. More likely, a part of it is the necessary balance to give the Viking forces the military power to accomplish what they historically accomplished. Within the game mechanics, historical outcomes may well require a force that is perhaps ten times the size of the real one.

I don’t think it is just the Vikings, either. Across the board, the Dark Age armies seem overpowered in a number of ways. It seems easier to raise large forces of 10s of 1000s of soldiers than historical data suggest it should be. The seasonal limits on military campaigns are also very weakly enforced. In reality, soldiers would have been sent home for the winter to avoid battling the elements. Not only that, they probably would have also been sent home during planting and harvest, so that war time wouldn’t interfere with unduly with their kingdom’s food supply. Crusader Kings, instead, uses the basic 4X mechanics of upkeep costs to the player’s treasury combined with war weariness calculations. It creates practical limits to the raising of armies, but not limits based on the same factors as were (likely) most important in reality.

I think I’ve complained about the seasons and weather before. If not, I’ll complain again. Crusader Kings (and the EU family of games) get points for modeling weather and the seasons. But only a few. The arrival of winter in the northern climates should, more often than not, put a dead halt to military action until the spring thaw. Instead, the way the game handles it – increasing attrition during winter months – makes it just one more “cost” to manage when maintaining an army. It seems to me that you’re more successful keeping your army in the field and just feeding money and reinforcements to it through the supply system versus actually losing the 4-5 months out of the year required to cycle your armies home and back with the weather.

Although that’s one of my persistent complaints, lets just return to the army size and with it go back to something I said about Medieval II: Total War. Contrasting with Rome: Total War, medieval-period battles were much smaller than those of the classical age such that a “typical” fight could be played with the Medieval II units at a one-to-one ratio between rendered and modeled men. That goes doubly so for the Dark Ages, where the ability to support large armies was even less than in the tail-end of the High Medieval period. Remember, I was first drawn into Vikings by its depiction of shield wall combat in a battle consisting of hundreds of participants, not thousands – something at the low end of Medieval‘s range. The drawback, of course, is that Medieval II isn’t (nor is it really meant to be) much of a simulator of realistic combat.

The Last Kingdom is a comprehensive mod that includes a cinematic introduction.

Enter the Medieval II mod, The Last Kingdom. I first came across this overhaul of the Medieval‘s Kingdoms sequel many years ago. I recall reading introductory material from, I think, The Last Kingdom‘s developer’s website, which I can’t locate today. Whether I just can’t find it or whether the site has been taken down, I don’t know. This stuff is 10 years old by now. I’ll tell you what I remember, but half of how I remember it is probably wrong.

I believe the developer is, himself, in academics as a profession. His intent was to make a strictly historical mod, accurately portraying aspects of life the Viking Age. He found himself limited in that goal by the mechanics of Total War, and so the result is a mixed bag of historical fidelity and Total War mechanics. He also uses, as a major source, Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom. As a result, in addition to the historical elements he has some of Cornwell’s fictional or speculative characters participating in the campaigns.

The modified elements run the gamut of what conversions typically do. The artwork and skins are redone to provide a more authentic-looking Viking/Dark Age depiction of clothing, armor, and weaponry. New unit types are introduced to distinguish between the various Northern European cultures. The build-tree has also been redone to provide a set of buildings and technological advances more appropriate to the period. Lastly, the stats of the units have been altered to change the feeling of the real-time battles.

Non-campaign battles are built using army points, with random or automatic unit selection.

Originally, my interest in this was for historical battles, to the extent that we can find such. Like I said above, Medieval seems to be right at the spot where it is capable of representing the vast majority of organized fighting from it’s period as a one-to-one ratio.

Modifications include the graphics, unit types, and parameters that govern battle resolution. It looks nice.

My initial impressions of this mod were very good. Normally, Total War battles are frantic affairs. Units race around the field, often executing contorted commands frantically clicked in by the player. Almost any realism mod is going to start by slowing everything down. This mod does that, and more. I won’t speculate on exactly how it was done but the shield walls act like shield walls. When similar units meet, they’ll stand in line bashing away at each other for a long time. Eventually, one side or the other will begin to dominate. In reality, shield wall combat was exhausting but not particularly deadly as long as the line held. Once a line broke, the fleeing army might well get slaughtered unless they were protected by other, intact forces.

This is still Total War, so the downside of the more deliberate battles is there is a tendency to fight to the last man. I’m guessing the casualties are ahistorically high, but that is pretty much guesswork all around as we’re not going to be finding detailed battlefield reports circa 865 AD. A second major problem I have with this as a tool for fighting one-off historical battles is my inability to get those battles set up in the game engine.

I’ve long had trouble using the scenario editor in Medieval II: Kingdoms and this mod seems to exacerbate the problems that are already there. The random battles are fairly easy to use, especially (if you are trying to get a historical setup) since you can hand-pick the armies on both sides of the field. Two issues conspire to make this less than fully satisfactory, both obvious when comparing experience of playing Total War in the campaign mode. First, there is no way to “carry over” your army, from either a victory or a defeat, into a future battle. You can construct a new army, but all units will be at full strength. This is particularly noticeable in that the campaign engine manages casualties and experience, allowing your army to be reshaped by the battles in which it engages. Likewise, the terrain. In the campaign game, the battle maps are created based upon where the encounter takes place on the strategic map. In the single battle mode, you need to choose from a more limited set of maps, which can detract from the experience. For example, in that last screenshot, I didn’t actually want to fight the battle as a contested river crossing, it just seemed to turn out that way.

This heightened realism mod, whatever faults it has, does seem to be quite a find for Dark Ages tactical battles. The larger problem is the lack of historical information on battles to which to apply the engine. Information is scarce regarding the details of battles. Similarly, there are no strategic or operational engines that focus on realism. The Last Kingdom does add new life to its Viking-centric campaign, but at the end of the day it remains a Total War game. For Crusader Kings, it does a descent and immersive job of portraying the politics of the time but, as I’ve identified early in the article, it is probably pretty far from being an accurate operational engine for the Viking invasion of England.

*This character is a fictional daughter Ælla of Northumbria, who may or may not have had daughters. The name and some of the narrative is based on Judith of Flanders, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor.

**The mixing of fiction and fantasy can become confusing. Judith, the real Judith, was the second wife of Æthelwulf, son of Ecgberht, not his first as was shown in the series. As his second wife, the once-and-future kings of England were not her own children, but rather her stepsons. Indeed, it was cause for court intrigue as some wondered whether Judith’s children by Æthelwulf, being the grand-children of the Holy Roman Emperor, might claim the thrown of Wessex over their older half-brothers. As it turned out, she had no children in this, her first marriage, nor in her second to Æthelwulf’s son Æthelbald, who is left out of the Vikings series entirely (see the discussion on time compression in the main text).

A few days after King Kong coming off Netflix, District 9 was also set to be removed. This is a Peter Jackson -produced film about aliens, set in the near future (of 2009, as the movie is already ten years old). It was a feature-length remake of a five-minute short film called Alive in Joburg by director Neill Blomkamp. Blomkamp was working with Jackson on a Halo -based film but, when that didn’t come to fruition, Blomkamp proposed to make District 9.

Mercifully, I read nothing about the movie before I watched it. I only knew it had good reviews. For some reason, I also thought it was related to the TV series Colony, about which I also saw good reviews. I decided that I would first watch District 9 and then Colony. When I found out the connection was all in my head, I ended up watching neither. Nevertheless, the link between the two remained in my imagination.

With that background, the “twists” of the District 9 story were all a surprise to me. I’ll try not to give away too much here, but no guarantees. If you want to watch it without my bias, go watch it – you’ll likely find it worth your while. Netflix’s rating system suggested that, while the average review was 3.6 stars, I would rank it 4.7 stars out of 5. That is probably a little over-ambitious, but I think they have correctly identified that this is “my kind of film.”

The format mixes mockumentary-style presentation with what might be meant to look like “found footage.” In this case, the “find” seems to consist of both used and cut material from the makings of a TV documentary special. For example, some scenes are shown using body cams or surveillance cameras. At the same time, other scenes are show using conventional camera techniques. As the viewer, we are to place ourselves in a world where an alien spacecraft has been hovering over Johannesburg for the last 25 years or so, and yet it is a world otherwise of our own present day.

Many have read deeper meaning into the film. Certainly the location and the story’s premise leads one to see parallels with apartheid. A key plot point is also formed around the “smart gun” technology of alien weapons. We see that there are restrictions on weapons (and technology in general) as well as open and flagrant violations of those restrictions. We also have the multinational corporation contracted to privately handle traditional governmental functions, like security. That results in another plot where the secret motivations and methods of said corporation (conveniently, Multi-National United) are exposed.

But is it allegory or is it just a splatter film*? While the references to South African history are obvious**, is there really any message about the politics of South Africa to be found in the story? Similarly the themes of guns and corporations. While the ideas are there, are they presented in a way that is supposed to talk to us about our current (or at least, 2009) societal problems? Does that fact that the government tries to seize illegal guns and fails argue for or against gun control? Is it even supposed to be an argument?

The one theme that is clearly part of the movie and intended to be is what I talked about with King Kong. As the movie progresses, the audience comes to identify with the aliens (prawns, as one of their nicknames has it) as the sympathetic characters of the film. Even our main character transitions away from being a pathetic anti-hero. He becomes someone we can respect as he also becomes less human and more alien. Unlike King Kong, we do not see human civilians being killed by the prawns. Worst case, the privatized army of Multi-National United get shot back at after they have already initiated the aggression. At the end, we’re left with a vague hint that we don’t really know the intention of the aliens. Maybe shortly (3 years?) after the film ends, the prawns will return and destroy us all. Maybe not. In that ambiguity we find ourselves free to take the side of the “other” over the human race.

*A new term I learned this week, specifically referring to Peter Jackson’s early works.

**1982 is the arrival date of the alien spaceship. This also happens to be the end date of the District Six relocation project, where 60,000 non-whites were forceably relocated from the Cape Town neighborhood to Cape Flats and designated areas. Are there supposed to be implications about the resolution of the South African racial problems in the face of a new “other?”

To those who saw Vietnam as a growing failure, the results from from the battlefields of 1966-1967 demonstrated that failure. Road to Disaster describes the the strategy of seeking large-scale engagements as “attrition,” and as a fight that Westmoreland was clearly losing. The narrative is that U.S. commander through this period, in adding more troops to the fray, was simply throwing good lives after sunk costs. His repeated requests for increases came on top of a decided lack of progress. In other words, while he could show nothing so far he would claim that “just 100,000 more soldiers” would turn the stalemate into a victory.

There is another side of this argument. At the time, Westmoreland’s claim was that he was showing substantial improvement and that the additional troops would hasten the achievement of victory for the U.S. The numbers, it was said, showed solid progress, particularly in contrast to the year before. It was asserted that the ability of the communists to continue the war was being steadily degraded. While that assertion seems to have been proven entirely wrong by the Tet Offensive in 1968, I don’t think it is quite as far-fetched as it might seem in retrospect.

Taking the Offensive: October 1966–September 1967 gives a counterpoint to Road to Disaster‘s tale of disaster. This version not dominated by the ultimate failure to save South Vietnam and the anti-war post-analysis that is so prevalent today. This is now the third in the five-part Campaigns of the Vietnam War, a booklet-type format summarizing the major phases of the U.S. Army involvement in Vietnam. Compared to the first two, it is considerably less dramatic. For the most part, it summarizes the Army’s operations, breaking them down by region. Perhaps more interesting here is the Analysis section at the tail-end of the book.

That analysis is generally positive about the performance of the Army during this period, a sharp contrast to the gloomy outlook ofRoad to Disaster. Whereas VanDeMark cites the “attrition” strategy as utter failure, both in general and particularly through 1967, Taking the Offensive explicitly calls it successful. As evidence it cites the 10:1 loss ratio between insurgent and U.S. forces. In the first nine months of 1967, there were 66,000 communist deaths compared to 10,000 South Vietnamese forces and 7,000 U.S. servicemen. Furthermore, they calculate a disparity in replacement rates, after which the U.S. force rose by 66,000 while the communist forces declined by 20,000. Another metric cited is the percentage of the rural population living under the government’s control rose from 44% to 48%.

Part of that latter figure is related to the relocation of civilians to refugee camps in secure areas. Even Taking the Offensive acknowledges the problem with tracking, as a good thing, the creation of refugees by forcible removal from their home villages. By the numbers, it both increases the population under government control as well as denying the communists the resources (whether provided voluntarily or under duress) that they would obtain from the local population. While Road to Disaster goes into considerably more detail about the inability of the South Vietnamese government to care for refugees, Taking the Offensive refers to the “squalid refugee camps” “straining the ability of provincial administrators to care for” the refugees which contribute to the ostensibly positive pacification numbers.

One final area where Taking the Offensive and Road to Disaster diverge is in their assessment of the health of that South Vietnamese government. Road to Disaster paints a rather bleak picture of a dysfunctional system. The rather-compelling conclusion is that saving South Vietnam was simply impossible due to a government that was entirely unworthy of popular support. Worse still, it seems that there wasn’t anyone competent waiting in the wings. One might conclude that the War in Vietnam was essentially lost with the removal and assassination of Diệm who, for all of his faults, seemed to have been a capable administrator. This fits with the story of Road to Disaster, the essense of which is analyzing the failure of the Kennedy administration to do what it should have known was right. In this case, it seemed that Kennedy would have put a halt to U.S. support for the coup, had they just got themselves a little better coordinated. Taking the Offensive, by contrast, talks about “the growing political stability of the South Vietnamese state.”

The campaign in Binh Dinh, where the 1st Cavalry moved in to again clear insurgent forces from areas near the populous coast, is included in Taking the Offensive, but only to introduce the situation of mid-1967. The U.S goals in targeting the province in the fall of 1966 occur too late for the series’ previous installment and apparently too soon to feature in the current one. In the more detailed Combat Operations series, operation Irving is in theStemming the Tide book, it coming right on the transition between defensive and offensive operations. Within that context, Stemming the Tide doesn’t tie the operation into the pre-Tet offensive campaign in terms of impact. It does give the military details, which are a primary source for the Vietnam Combat OperationsTOAW scenarios. Nevertheless, Vietnam Combat Operations Vol. 4, per its subtitle (Counteroffensive II), it is grouped with the U.S. offensive actions that extend through 1967.

1st Cavalry deploys to the Binh Dinh coastline to search the Kim Son Valley.

The TOAW scenario steps through the phases of the American search for the 3rd PAVN Division in Binh Dinh province. You are instructed to create a headquarters at LZ Hammond (the highlighted hex, above, near the center of the screen) and allocate your forces in a mix – some active and some in reserve. As I described earlier, executing the historical operations grants you extra points towards your score. It also sets you up to properly trigger engagements with the enemy as they should occur historically. Of course, and this is the point isn’t it, it also lets you choose to alter those historical engagements.

After making themselves scarce in the Kim Son Valley, the 95th Battalion attacks my base at LZ Hammond

For example, as I was beginning to redeploy my forces away from Kim Son and into the mountainous area just west of Hoa Hoi (see the red victory point flag on the coast), a sizable enemy force showed up just outside LZ Hammond. Historically, this was a ten-minute bombardment that occurred in the middle of the night, notable (mostly) for the damage it caused. One American serviceman was killed and 32 were wounded, while 17 aircraft were damaged. Searching for the enemy turned up nothing; they were gone by morning.

In my pretend version, I moved all the forces that I could spare in an attempt to trap the attacking enemy near my strong point. It’s a level of reaction entirely out of place for 10 minutes worth of mortaring, no matter how destructive that fire may have been. Now an operational level treatment doesn’t go into that kind of detail – I can’t distinguish between an attack by mortar crews as opposed to an attempt at infantry overrun. From my perspective in TOAW, I had identified a large (potentially superior) enemy formation and therefore I planned to destroy it. It’s an interaction closer to what really occurred near the coast when multiple companies of communist forces were pinned down in the village of Hoa Hoi.

The Hoa Hoi scenario specifically includes the command helicopter of Lt. Col. George W. McIlwain,

That most significant battle of this campaign, that engagement at the village of Hoa Hoi, is presented as a scenario pair in Squad Battles: Tour of Duty. The scenarios were put together by John Tiller himself, so I was again looking forward to seeing the engine put to its best use. Obviously, with only two steps to the scenario, it is not the breaking down of the battle into key parts which worked so well before. The two scenarios correspond, more or less, to two major phases in the historical battle. In the first phase, the U.S. command was made aware of a communist presence in Hoa Hoi but had no idea to what extent. A platoon was inserted to determine what was there. When the platoon met significant resistance they soon realized that they were facing a numerically-superior force.

Of considerably more interest are the Huey gunships.

The first scenario portrays the insertion of a platoon into a hot Landing Zone. As is typical for Squad Battles, it ignores any landing zone preparatory bombardment (no off-board artillery here), but does allow you to designate your LZ “on the fly,” so to speak. In the two preceding screenshots, you can see my helicopters approaching the area around the village, coming in from the south. Instead, I flew them around to the northeast (see below).

Perhaps the highlight of this scenario is shown in the second of the two above screens. The insertion is supported by two Huey gunships with rockets. To me, this allows something closer to what an American unit in a contested landing might expect in terms of air and artillery support.

I felt better about losing my two gunships when I began the second scenario and saw the wrecks of all three aircraft from the prior scenario.

Unfortunately, my use of those gunships ended up in some embarrassment for my command. Even before I could get my guys landed, I lost both of the air-support helicopters to enemy fire. Both in the real calculus of that war and in terms of victory points, whatever the success of the infantry’s mission, that significant loss of assets is not going to look good on paper. I did, in fact, do pretty well with this scenario once you set aside the downed helicopters, but losing two “vehicles” meant a loss on points. My sense of failure was mitigated somewhat in that when the second scenario is loaded, all three helicopters from the first scenario on present on the map as wrecks. I have not read that the actual battle had significant cost in terms of support aircraft. In particular, I would think if the command helicopter would have been shot down during the operation, that would have been notable. I don’t know if John Tiller had sources that I didn’t read, or he was just starting you at what seemed to be a likely outcome of playing that first scenario.

That second phase of the battle includes the final assault on the village with a full battalion of troopers. The second scenario in the pair begins with the helicopter lift of those forces and ends with successful (or not) capture of the village. In this, the scenario has the features that I complained about in the single-scenario battles. The reinforcement and, ultimately, replacement of the initial platoon began shortly after the fighting started; as soon as U.S. commanders realized what they faced. Yet, despite a desire to take out the enemy quickly (before they had a chance to make their escape under cover of darkness), the final attack could not be organized before night fell. The assault and capture of the village actually took place the following day, using forces that were encamped overnight around the village.

What this highlights for me is the inability of these games, or any games, to determine the conditions under which history could be changed in the Vietnam War. Whether or not a player can beat history during a particular campaign or battle seems not to be what would tilt the outcome to a victory. Assuming one accepts the premises ofRoad to Disaster, they key factors resided in the political. U.S. politics, in terms of the extent to which the Johnson presidency was willing to risk drawing in China or the Soviet Union into a broader war. Also South Vietnamese politics as, ultimately, a military victory could only be sustained if it was followed up by good governance which would gain the support of the people. Many of the best Vietnam War games do model these political factors and the “morale” impacts that determine the support of the people. In all cases, though, the results of these calculations and whether they result in the player “winning” or “losing” the war, depend entirely on the assumptions that the game designer creates. Would pursuing retreating insurgents into Laos force the North to the negotiating table or cause the Chinese to send in ground forces? The best we can do is speculate.

This was the movie Jackson said he always wanted to remake. He had even attempted it at age 12 with hand-built models and his parents movie camera. When his film The Frighteners had some fair success, he proposed a remake of King Kong to the studio, but they didn’t think it was a good bet in competition with remakes of Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young, already in the works. But following the monster success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson was able to make the movie and make it how he wanted it. Perhaps that latter bit was something of the endevor’s undoing.

The film is over three hours and that is before the release of the “directors cut” version. It has too many characters, too many subplots, and to many Jackson-style action scenes. As a tribute to the original, 1933 version, it does have its merits. Jackson also tries to channel some Stanley Kubrick, suggesting the story is a version of Heart of Darkness (“It’s not an adventure story. Is it, Mr. Hayes?” “No, Jimmy. It’s not.”) All-in-all, its not a bad film, but it may well have been better to experience it with an hour or so shaved off.

The reason I watched it again is that my kids had never seen it and they’re at an age when they should appreciate dinosaurs fighting a supersized gorilla.

I suppose I was older then they are now when I first saw the 1933 version. Like Jackson himself, I was greatly saddened when the great ape was killed by the army, mostly for being misunderstood. Jackson, perhaps with a little too heavy a hand, tries to make sure that we understand that Denham (Jack Black) is the villain and Kong, along with most of the others he drags along on his adventure, are innocent victims. Such subtleties are lost on young kids.

At the end of the film, and argument broke out between my children. My daughter’s sympathies were with Kong and she was angry at the army for trying to kill him. That riled my boy a bit and soon the shouting began. Although my son acknowledged that Kong had turned out to be all right and it was not his fault he was brought to New York, he felt the army had no choice but to respond how they did.

“What is the army supposed to do? Kong was killing people? They have to stop him from killing people?” – Boy

“They should know, they should leave him alone.” – Girl

Eventually, it nearly came to blows. My daughter was cheering on Kong as he knocked down airplanes and my son thought it was terrible to applaud the killing of humans. Although my daughter took in the message of the movie as it was intended; the audience is expected to come over to the side of Kong by the time he is taken from Skull Island; there is also something admirable about my son’s position. When it comes down to it, shouldn’t we value human life above non-human life? If our city is really under assault by some strange, inhuman creature, shouldn’t our loyalty be first to our fellow man?

The boy is the younger and his attitude is more instinctive and less influenced by the surrounding culture. It may also be individual personality differences at play, unrelated to age or gender. I have to wonder, though, if there is something essentially male versus female in their reactions? Is the girl instinctively more likely, like Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) herself, to want to protect the big, hairy beast? Is the boy genetically predispositioned to defend the homeland against the invading hordes? Or am I like Jackson, overdoing a what was originally 100 minutes of monster/action movie and trying to project greater meaning where none exists?